St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-09-11

e L ),
Mayor Susannah Madeira Salter. or
one may chose to call her, is only
twenty-seven years Of age. of about the
average height and weighs 12S pounds,
She is. however. a typical
frontiersman's wife, possessed
OF Drawn and sinew rather than pleas
ing plumpness and roundneSS of form.
She talks in an easy, confident style.
in fairly good English, in which the
Western mixture of lenses sometimes
becomes prominent. She is always
properly dignifed, and in all the ex-
perience of Argonia has never been
known to crack a joke in the council
chamber. Her eyes are dark gray and
while her hair is inclined to golden and
is worn parted and crimped. She makes
all her own clothes, as well as those of
her four children, the second of whom
was the first child born in the town.
The Youngest is a little girl year old.
Mrs. Salter was born of Quaker
parents on Il farm near Lamira, Belmont
county, o., in 1852, but when twelve
years of age went to Kansas with her
parents, and there was given a limited
schooling at the Kansas State Industrial
college. of which Congressman J. A.
Anderson was then president. There
she met Louis A. Salter, son of an eX-
lieutenant governor of the state, who
was working his way through college by
running errandS and doing other work.
The future mayOress studied the art of
dresSmaking, and now boasts that she
has paid for the making of but one
gown in her life
In the fall of 1880 the present political
leader of ArgOnia'S deStinieS married
Mr.. Salter, and in 1888 she, her husband
and her parents moved to the town over
whose government she now preSides.
The first mayor was Mrs. Salter'S
father. The first winter Mr.. and Mrs.
Salter lived in deserted corn house,
the windows of which were the chute
holes, while the cooking was done ON a
gasoline stove, a portable heater fur
nishing warmth Mr.. Salter engaged
in business and the couple began to
prosper. They organized Baptist
church, the first in the place, and the
wife took leading part in the forma-
ton of a Women S Christian Temperance
lodge. the meetings of which she always
insisted in having conducted according
to the approved parliamentary rules of
debating societies, with which she had
been made more or less familiar at the
industrial ScnOOl.
Mrs. Salter was nominated for mayor
by the Woman's Christian Temperance
union last spring on strictly prohibit
ton platform. The nominating conven-
ton was held in the Baptist church the
Saturday evening before the election
and was opened by the singing of
"America,, followed by the reading of
a psalm and by prayer. A ticket
was nominated. On election
day the Observation-Disclosures ordered
their tickets printed with Mrs. Salter's
name as the candidate for mayor as a
burlesQue. The temperance workers
thereupon waited on Mrs. Salter, find
ing her at the washtub. She was ex-
ceedingly angry when Informed of the
insult, but after council of war
elected. Her friends then went to work
with will. and when the polls closed
she had received three-fourths of the
votes cast. She, however, stoutly dis
claims any prediction towards
woman's rights, and in all family mat
ters she defers to her husband, we'll
TODD attorney and real estate agent.
Mrs. Salter declares that one term is all
she wants, and that she is not ambitious
for any further political preferment.
She says. whenever questioned on the
SUBJECT. tnat she Will be glad when her
term is aided, as she wants nothing
better than private life. She receives
the princely salary of 81 a year for guild
as rule are not Overmuch pleased with
her administration, and it is safe to say
that next spring she will not be called
upon to take second term. In the
council chamber it is said that she pre-
sides with becoming severity, checking
all inclinations to levity with magis-
terial frOwns.